Media personality Mohamed Saeed Mahfouz revealed his extraordinary love story that began thirty years ago and became the talk of the town after his recent marriage contract. He said, “For the first time, while working as a TV presenter delivering serious and sober content and teaching at the university, I suddenly found myself a hero in a love story, or I unintentionally revealed this side of my life, honestly.” He added in an interview with artist Esaad Younis on the program “Sahibat Al-Saada” on DMC channel that the story started 30 years ago when he was a 22-year-old novice journalist from Alexandria living in a cramped life with ten friends on the eleventh floor, which was a rooftop enclosed with wood.

The love story began when he first spotted his neighbor on the lower balcony, “a little girl studying for high school exams,” saying, “I opened the window to get some air, but instead of natural air, the air of love came to me, and I was drawn to her.” He tried to attract her attention by writing daily letters on the yellow newsprint paper of Al-Ahram newspaper, where he had started working, folding them and throwing them on her balcony. He wrote 12 letters over 12 days; the second letter was a brief ID card including his name, age, and job. He started flirting cautiously because he felt she was shy and considerate of her family.

He resorted to another trick after noticing she was not attracted to him by using old cassette tapes and chose the song “Al-Layl Al-Hadi” by Mohamed Fouad, deliberately playing it daily hoping she would hear the gentle call “Habibi” at the beginning. His wife, Dr. Maha Fathy, added that she used to collect those letters late at night to read them but did not know he was watching her from behind the window glass until after marriage. She pointed out that her friend in the opposite building saw him watching her but without his knowledge.